Carlsberg First-Quarter Sales Beat Estimates

First-quarter net revenue rose two per cent on an adjusted basis to 13 billion kroner ($2 billion), the Copenhagen-based company said in a statement Wednesday. The median estimate of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg was for 1.3 percent growth.

“We delivered a solid start to the year,” Chief Executive Officer Cees ’t Hart said in the statement.

Carlsberg has forecast higher profit this year on rising sales in Asia, where it battles Heineken in countries such as Vietnam and Myanmar. That’s offsetting a sharp decline in Russia, where the company is the largest brewer. The Dutch executive, who joined as CEO in June last year, is also closing breweries and trimming headcount as Carlsberg faces an enlarged rival from the combination of Anheuser-Busch InBev and SABMiller.

The company will pay executives a bonus worth 120 percent of their base salaries if $350 million in cost savings is achieved by 2018, ’t Hart said in an interview last month. It has also pledged to pay more earnings in the form of dividends.